The Manitoba Nurses Union has warned that its members who work in two health regions were told to brace for budgetary belt-tightening.
“Since last week I’ve been hearing from nurses that are saying they’ve been told that they’re going be looking at higher nurse-patient loads, that there’s going to be discussion prior to overtime being approved,” union president Darlene Jackson told the Free Press Monday.
“This is a planned approach to cut costs at the direction of the government.”
She said the two health regions are Prairie Mountain Health and Southern Health and she expects regions throughout the province will have to follow suit.
“I believe they have been given very clear direction that they must cut money in their budget, they must find savings,” Jackson said.
Mike Thiessen / Free Press Files
Manitoba Nurses Union president, Darlene Jackson: “A planned approach to cut costs at the direction of the government.”
When asked about the directive Monday, the press secretary for Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Shared Health has been told to redirect eight per cent of its funding from the bureaucracy to the front lines and clinical services. The funding for Manitoba health authorities in fiscal 2024-25 is $4.7 billion.
“It’s one step we’re taking to improve health care and make it work for you,” Asagwara, who was not available for an interview, said in a prepared statement.
“Manitobans were clear: they want more resources at the bedside and more support for the front-line nurses, aides, physicians, and allied health professionals, and less resources in the bureaucracy,” the minister said.
But Jackson said front-line workers will feel it, no matter how funding is redirected.
“I believe they have been given very clear direction that they must cut money in their budget, they must find savings.”–Darlene Jackson
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether the government says, ‘this has to come from bureaucracy’,” Jackson said. “The message has sort of filtered down from the executive team in the region to nurses through directors, through managers, that there is definitely a look at how savings can be achieved.”
She said she doesn’t know the amount regional authority administrators have been told to save, just that nursing staff have been advised it may affect them.
“There’s going to be changes made to how they cover shifts, how they delineate over time. They’re going be looking at whether they’re going to be replacing shifts, whether they replace sick time,” said Jackson.
RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS FILES
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara.
“Members are saying, ‘Are they going to stop replacing all sick calls?’ We know that there has been direction given and it’s certainly going to affect the front line and it is going to affect patient care.”
A source close to health system leaders, who asked not to be identified, said Monday the demand to cut costs echoes the directive given by former Tory premier Brian Pallister to find tens of millions of dollars in savings.
“This is the exact same exercise and it’s distracting them from improving care,” they said.
For example, in 2018, an internal document showed the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority planned to find $36 million in savings through a number of categories, ranging from laundry and food production to consolidating patient beds and staffing. Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government insisted at the time that it was a cost saving, not a spending cut.
On Monday, Doctors Manitoba said the system needs more resources, not less.
“Physicians were hopeful that the days of expenditure reductions and resource constraints in health care were behind us,” a spokesperson for the advocacy organization said Monday.
“Hearing there may be new edicts to find savings is distressing, especially given the unreasonably long wait times patients face and the chronic shortage of doctors, nurses and allied health professionals across the province.”
Doctors Manitoba represents more than 4,000 physicians and medical students.
Late Monday, Shared Health would only say it’s “working on an ongoing basis to ensure all areas of our organization remain focused on high-priority areas of the health system that support improved access, quality of care and outcomes. As part of that work, we are working with both clinical and administrative staff to ensure non-clinical expenditures are being appropriately and efficiently managed to support clinical services for all Manitobans.”
The statement said questions about regional operations “should be directed to the health regions in question.”
Meantime, the Manitoba Association for Health Care Professionals said Monday it wasn’t aware of any cost-saving directives that would affect their members.
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.
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